


we're all newborns in this strange new world

by bebitched



Category: Twilight
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-10
Updated: 2008-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:29:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bebitched/pseuds/bebitched
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>The world is a paradox without her and reality is bending at odd angles to compensate.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	we're all newborns in this strange new world

 

 

Bella’s blood covers your hands, sticky crimson webbing your fingers, and while you’d always had a subtle appreciation for metaphors, the perfection of this one is utterly lost on you. Her heart is still and each second scratches another tick mark on your skin, but there’s no wincing for you. You are utterly still. Waiting.

 

Silence is your enemy now.

 

*

 

The room is a graveyard for more than just her. Anguished sobs half-broken stink like decay.

 

Nothing lives here anymore.

 

*

 

You should have fought harder.

 

Emmett eventually carries you away, to the thick of the woods where deer grow like weeds and temptation should be enough. But you’re beyond the hunger now. Blood tastes like Bella, reeks of stolen second chances and roads that end at the horizon, and you can’t bear it. The world is a paradox without her and reality is bending at odd angles to compensate.

 

Your eyes grow black in mourning.

 

*

 

There’s a plastic body bag, forms from the CDC forged in neat ink, and you won’t watch as there’s a metamorphosis of lies and they emerge as truth.

 

Alice doesn’t enjoy fabricating the evidence this time.

 

*

 

You hear her cry, once, and you know (somehow) that it’s meant for you. A bud of longing blooms in the sound; you’re not sure whether there’s relief in the chafe of it.

 

But your legs carry you down the stairs despite the impossibility of it (you’d planned on perching motionlessly until the apocalypse, skin fading to paper over time). The air you take into your lungs burns with fresh bleach (you haven’t taken a breath in a week and why would you? there are no more words to say).

 

You knew about paternal bonds, you’d read on the subject in a million minds and you thought you had understood, but the living room appears around the corner and she’s there and nothing could have prepared you for it, could have readied you for the power her eyes have on you. It seemed she had already found you before you had found her. The chocolate brown of them aches with familiarity, stabs a part of you that you’d been trying to numb for a week. The novocain is wearing off and a sob rips through you as Rosalie places the child in your arms.

 

You compare the delicate pink of the blanket with the vibrant shade of red that still stains your hands, stains your everything, and when you whisper _I’m sorry_, you’re not really sure who you’re speaking to anymore.

 

Her cheeks flush slightly at the effort of swallowing a cry and you can read her, more clearly now than in the womb.

 

_So am I.  _


End file.
